


And So We Burn

by SilverDoe290s



Series: Grindeldore Character Study Pieces [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And all that entails, But hopefully the practice in writing these characters should pave the way to better fics to come, Characterisation Excercise, I am not happy with this, Listen this is just me trying to figure out how to write this character in far too many words, M/M, POV Gellert Grindelwald, Summer of 1899, Young Albus Dumbledore, Young Gellert Grindelwald
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 20:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17251145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDoe290s/pseuds/SilverDoe290s
Summary: How to fall in love, and then fall apart, in just under two months as told by Dark Lord Gellert GrindelwaldOr: The Author is New to The Grindeldore Ship And Embarks Upon A Long, Elaborate And Ultimately Failed Attempt at Getting to Grips With Characterization





	And So We Burn

Britain was damp and dull. A thin bubble of magic kept the downpour away from Gellert’s clothes, but it didn’t keep the dim, oppressive small-town air from creeping under his skin. Godric’s Hollow bore no trace of the boldness of its namesake; it had been trodden down until even the houses, straw-roofed and slanted, seemed to cower and huddle together. Gellert couldn’t picture his newfound pen-pal belonging to a place such as this; little wonder Albus yearned so badly to escape. 

But where else was he to go?

Well, then. He would simply have to entertain himself until there was an opportunity to meet Albus. 

* * *

 

By the time they did meet in person, Gellert’s mood had improved considerably, as had his regard for the town. As unassuming as it seemed to him at first glance, a closer inspection showed that there was so much _history_ here, everything it had promised when he’d decided to come. Old magic ran just under the surface, like veins just barely hidden by skin. The knowledge that it had been _pushed down,_ plastered over to make room for the everyday humdrum of the muggle inhabitants, chafed at him. It should pour freely through the streets. Once he was – well. There would be a time to change things, later. 

And then, there was Albus.

Gellert hadn’t known what to expect of meeting the other boy; a part of him had feared disappointment. There were people, he knew, who seemed eloquent and vibrant in writing, but who lacked the nerve to truly _live_ their ideas. The libraries of Durmstrang were lined with their works. It was an eventuality he was prepared for, but not the one he anticipated. The very name, _Albus, bright one,_ rang pleasantly in his mind. It felt familiar, as though imbued with stories that were yet to happen. The syllables felt as though they were made to be used by his tongue. 

A mere hunch, perhaps, but a seer would be a fool to ignore a hunch. 

 _A fool or a coward,_ Gellert thought as he recalled the late nights he’d spent pouring over the writings of seers who’d come before him, searching for any scrap that might help him make sense of his own visions. He’d come away not only empty-handed, but with a newly-forged disdain for other seers. Had there ever been one to prevent a disaster they foresaw? It seemed that every one of them had been paralyzed into inaction by the weight of the knowledge they were gifted with. Some, even, driven to insanity.

Well, he would do what they never dared. His visions would not gather dust in some old tome, another collection of unheeded warnings. They would steer the world in a new direction.

 _How,_ exactly, he didn’t quite know yet. But keeping the brightest upcoming wizard in Britain at his side seemed like a promising start.

A bright mind which was currently hovering in the doorway to his aunt’s kitchen. Gellert raised his eyes, not bothering to hide his curiosity.

Between his height and intelligence, Albus could have cut a rather imposing figure. Instead, he carried an air of distraction about him. Auburn hair mussed and untidy despite what appeared to have been an attempt to tie it back and tame it before coming over, clothes fitting awkwardly enough to make him look like a teenager who had just had his first growth spurt. He looked every inch the boyish intellectual Gellert had imagined when Albus’ article on transfiguration had first caught his attention. But his gaze – oh, his gaze. Sharp, alert blue eyes that allayed the last of Gellert’s fears that their acquaintanceship would reach a dead end.

“Come in, come in,” Bathilda ushered from behind the table where she had a pot of tea boiling. “Albus, this is my nephew Gellert. He’ll be spending the summer with me. Gellert -”

“Oh, yes, I know. Albus Dumbledore, the Hogwarts prodigy I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with.” He flashed a smile and was rewarded with a faint flush in the other boy’s cheeks. It seemed it would be easy to get a reaction from him. Gellert wasn’t sure if he was more satisfied or disappointed. He only hoped Albus wouldn’t become predictable. 

“The pleasure is most certainly mine – it's always flattering when someone takes an interest in my ideas, poorly expressed as they are. And of course, you have some interesting ideas of your own.” At this, Albus' eyes flicked sideways over Gellert’s left shoulder, where his Aunt Bathilda was humming to herself as she poured tea, and Gellert suspected he might have said more about those _ideas_ had she not been there. He twitched slightly; Bathilda was a sweet woman, and intelligent in her own, more experienced if less ardent, way, but her presence was hampering their conversation. “I’m sorry about your expulsion,” Albus continued.

“Don’t be,” Gellert said lightly, sipping his tea. “If anything, they did me a favour. What I have left to learn lies outside the walls of a school.”

Albus raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps I’m sorry for Durmstrang’s loss, rather than yours.”

Gellert’s stomach did a strange little flip at that. Flattery was supposed to be _his_ department.

They lapsed into silence then, and Gellert took the opportunity to resume his study of the other boy. There was potential there, certainly; knowledge, magic, restlessness; a desire for change; all swimming in those eyes that latched on to every word that left Gellert’s mouth like a man parched for water, written in his frame as he leaned in across the table. But it was contained, controlled; wrestled to fit into the container of a provincial, duty-bound, responsible young man. Gellert would have to pry it free with care.

“Thank you for the tea, Ms Bagshot, and for inviting me to your home,” Albus said presently.

“Of course, dear. I’m just glad you and Gellert here seem to have hit it off. He’ll never admit it, of course, but I do believe he feels rather isolated. He’s never quite managed to connect with his peers at school, from what he’s told me, and there aren’t many others your age around here.”

Gellert frowned slightly. Not that he _wasn’t_ thrilled at the prospect of companionship, but he resented the implication of _needing_ it. His own company had always served him well enough. He resented her talking over his head in that authoritative tone more – as though she knew what it was he needed from life.

“Yes - and thank you for taking me in,” he said instead, doing his best to keep the irritation from his voice. He took another sip of tea, then held up his cup. “Perhaps when we’ve finished this, you could show me around, Albus? I’ve explored the town myself, of course, but nothing beats being shown by a local.” 

* * *

 

“I should have come here more often before we met,” Albus said wistfully, gesturing around the café they had ducked into to avoid yet another summer shower. “The lemon sherbet is _divine.”_

Gellert smiled indulgently. Had Albus been anyone else, Gellert might have derided the delight he took in simple things as childish – but it _was_ Albus, and Gellert had heard too much from him to accuse him of simplemindedness. “A shame it’s full of muggles,” he said, but Albus just shrugged.

“As long as we can conceal our voices to keep from being overheard, they won’t bother us. There is worse company one could have,” he said, and oh, _there_ was a trace of bitterness that piqued Gellert’s interest.

“Worse company?”

“My brother,” he said in a low, resigned voice.

“You do not get along?” From what he had seen of Aberforth, that failed to surprise him. The boy had struck him as dull and uninspired. He would only ever hold Albus back.

Albus shrugged. “He dislikes me.”

“He does not appreciate you,” Gellert corrected. 

Albus fiddled with a napkin. “I am not what my family needs – but I am all they have. And so, he resents me. Rightfully, I suppose.”

Gellert leaned back, focused fully on Albus. This self-doubt – he would need to get rid of it. They could achieve so much together – but only if they _both_ believed it wholeheartedly. 

“No,” he said softly. “No, you are not what he needs.” Albus didn’t let any expression cross his face, but he went very still and swallowed, so Gellert knew he had his attention. “But perhaps, you could be what the _world_ needs.” Albus was still watching – warily, now. Perhaps Gellert had overplayed his hand – but he could not back out now. “ _Albus._ You don’t need me to tell you that you are a genius. If you feel this town cannot contain you, that need not be a _bad_ thing. _Magic is the art of drawing from things what they have always had the potential to be.”_

Albus gave a startled laugh, and Gellert felt a thrill of satisfaction at having drawn so uncontrolled a reaction from the normally composed wizard. “Are you quoting my own words back at me?”

“ _The Limits of Transfiguration: Real and Perceived.”_ It was the article that had first spurred Gellert to contact the boy. He’d taken it for light reading – his main focus had been on magical and muggle history and political treatises at the time – but had found that the article put words on his own, instinctive understanding of magic that no-one he’d met before, not even his teachers, seemed to fully grasp. “And what would have a better chance of persuading you, but your own words?”

“You’re quite right... supposing, that is, that I were to _need_ persuasion.”

“Do you not?”

Albus' eyes twinkled – like he knew something Gellert didn’t, like he had told a joke and Gellert had missed the punchline. It could have infuriated him, but instead he found himself wanting to know _what_ he had missed. “You should not mistake my personal shortcomings for a lack of conviction, Gellert.”

“The desire to be free is not a _shortcoming._ I quoted you because if magic is _potential,_ then – surely – its suppression is a crime.” He had Albus’ attention again, he knew. He _felt_ the weight of that attention like something physical, felt his words drop into place against it. “And so is the suppression of your talents, your _vision_. If you owe your family your care, then you owe it to _everyone else_ to deliver to the world what you have to offer.”

Fittingly, the sun chose that moment to burst through the clouds and fall across the table, catching Albus’ face in a strange expression; something Gellert would place somewhere between thoughtfulness, awe and _longing._ An expression Gellert wanted to memorize, just so he could learn how to evoke it again.

* * *

The clouds returned a few times after that day in the café, but only briefly, and were quickly dispelled by a sun that grew every day in intensity. Instead of town, these days, their walks carried them to the riverside. 

“I don’t think this is the best place for us to hunt for Hallows,” Albus said in a voice thick with amusement. “Unless you imagine the Resurrection Stone is a pebble at the bottom of Godric’s Creek.”

“Maybe it is,” Gellert said, levitating his bag to rest at the foot of a tree. “Maybe it isn’t. How could we know unless we’ve searched?”

Albus hummed his wordless agreement.

“Why is it the stone that captivates you so?” Gellert asked. “Surely, it is the most useless of the Hallows. As far as the original story claims, it cannot even bring a person back in truth. It only makes you waste away on the shade of what was.”

“Every Hallow is supposed to have a price. But which would you choose, then?”

Albus had deflected the question, and Gellert didn’t fail to notice. But to press further might risk driving him away, so he didn’t remark on it. “The wand, of course.”

“Of course? You relish being murdered in your sleep, then?”

Gellert laughed. “I would be more careful than _that_. Your lack of faith in me wounds me, my friend. But yes, the wand. It is the only one it makes sense to seek. My greatest wish is not to hide from the world, nor do I have any great regrets or losses that I wish to undo. The wand would let me challenge the world head-on.”

“To shape it into something better,” Albus said, nodding his head in understanding. “That is your greatest wish.”

“It is,” Gellert agreed - and there it was again. Eyes squinting against the strength of the midday sun, face tilted towards him – the same expression he had glimpsed in the café, but less conflicted this time. The longing was clearer now, and the awe – it washed through Gellert like a rejuvenating potion. He had inspired admiration in others before, of course, but never in someone as gifted as Albus, and never in someone who’s own thoughts aligned so well to his. But then... perhaps the word _awe_ was not quite the right one to place that expression.

Gellert held Albus’ gaze evenly, and eventually Albus dropped it, cheeks flushing ever so slightly red. The shyness of the gesture struck a chord in Gellert that he couldn’t name. It was not like the self-recrimination he had tried to weed out before. This was not Albus running from himself, chiding himself for daring to want _more_. It was an acknowledgement of something in himself - a soft acknowledgement, gentle in a way that Gellert had never been good at – but an acknowledgement nevertheless. A shift in dynamic, from preaching to the choir to wordless understanding, an acknowledgement that...

Oh. _Oh. There_ was something he had never considered. 

Gellert broke away from the moment of connection, if only because he didn’t know what to do with it. He had looked to Albus for a partner, an equal, a confidant even – all things he had never had at Durmstrang, or anywhere else for that matter. He had never considered that he might be able to pull him in closer – never imagined what that _closer_ could look like.  

Albus had turned away too now, focusing his attention on moving his own bag to rest with Gellert’s. Gellert turned to glance at the river. Its water was remarkably clear, smooth, dappled pebbles visible several meters beneath the surface. Focusing his magic, Gellert found a spot that lay sheltered from any current and bound the water there together, separating it from the rest. He drew it up in a bubble, holding it midair. Albus was still oblivious as Gellert guided it towards the shore.

When Albus turned, he had mere seconds to register what was happening before he found himself drenched from head to toe. For a few more seconds he just stood there, gaping and incredulous.

“You looked like you needed help cooling down,” Gellert said. Albus continued to stare.

“You did that without a wand _or_ words?” he said at last.

Gellert just smirked. “Wandless magic _is_ a specialty of mine.”

“And to think you wish to wield the Elder Wand,” Albus muttered under his breath, hand going to his own wand. Gellert opened his mouth to retort, only to find himself knocked over by a freak wave from behind. As he gathered himself up again, he saw Albus with his wand arm outstretched, looking entirely too delighted. Gellert narrowed his eyes.

“So much for _helping_ you cool down, if you’re going to be so ungrateful. _Incendio_ _!”_

_“Aguamenti!”_

Gellert leaped back as a flurry of spells danced between them, each barely blocked or ducked. In the scorching summer heat, the air around them seemed to crackle with the magic. As Albus cast again, it almost _rippled –_ the entire world shifting under their touch. This was nothing like practicing magic alone – that had its own thrill to it, the thrill of discovery and pushing boundaries, but this was _wild,_ uncontrolled. His magic responded before his mind could even catch up, burning away the roots Albus had guided to emerge from the ground and wrap themselves around his legs.

“ _Avis!”_ he called, sending a flock of hummingbirds flying in Albus’ direction – only for them to start circling around a bunch of honeysuckle that had suddenly appeared in Albus’ outstretched hands. After about a minute, the birds disappeared – but the honeysuckle did not.

“ _How?”_ Gellert demanded. “You cannot create something from nothing. Even your article, which challenges everything else, lets that tenet stand.” The birds had come from nothing, granted, but they had gone back to being nothing soon after. This was a different kind of magic.

“I didn’t make something from nothing. There is always _something_ to be made into something else, if you know to look for it.”

Gellert looked around the circle they had scorched into the field. “I see nothing here of sufficient value to grow flowers from.”

Albus moved one hand from the bunch to gain a better grip on his wand and flicked it, allowing the honeysuckle to revert to a rather dazed-looking beetle that stood still for a moment, then began to move frantically. Albus turned over his hand and watched it crawl between his fingers with a soft smile that reminded Gellert of the way he had looked at him during that moment before Gellert had splashed him. 

It was... endearing. No, that was not strong enough a word. It was breathtaking, to watch someone who had previously wielded the forces of nature _effortlessly_ in a mere playful duel now play with an insect so delicately. An insect that had, not five minutes ago, been honeysuckle, and before that an insect again. 

 _We use only the force needed,_ Albus had written in a letter to him, and Gellert had seen it then as just another doubt he would need to overcome, but he saw now that if any man could change the world using _no more than the force needed_ it was Albus. Gellert may have had the raw strength and instinct in magic, and Albus had it too, but he had something else as well – an elegance, a lightness of touch beyond what Gellert himself possessed. 

The sun was still scorching, and Albus was shining under it. Gellert could not have pinpointed exactly when it had happened, but something in him had made up its mind as he crossed the burnt patch of grass to stand next to him. Albus looked at him, then, and a shiver ran down Gellert’s spine. That adoration in his eyes, the power in his veins. The understated confidence in his voice when he spoke. He wanted to drink it all in – to taste it on his lips, feel it between his fingers. To hold the man’s attention and never release it.

Gellert reached out with steady fingers and brushed a strand of that wild auburn hair from Albus’ face. The motion had suggested itself, the same way an alteration to a spell suggested itself, and sang out to him with the same feeling of _rightness_ when he carried it out. 

As his fingers brushed against skin, he saw Albus look at him with narrowed, weighing eyes and for an instant of blind terror he thought he might have misread the signals.

The sudden pressure of Albus’ lips against his informed him that he had misread precisely nothing.

The heat of the sun bore down against his back, but Gellert barely felt it.

* * *

Cold morning sunlight trickled under the shed door, playing with straws of hay. Gellert’s head rested on Albus’ shoulder, his arm around his waist. The warmth was welcoming; the knowledge of the other man’s mind turning things over even as he stared in silence at patterns of light on the wall, even more so. 

Gellert had awoken with the taste of ash and smoke on his tongue that morning. If he had a choice, he would see only the visions that showed him a clear path to victory; he had no use for the others. But they came regardless. It was not the violence and brutality of the visions that bothered him; he had long since learned to appreciate destruction as necessary to rebirth, to rejoice in it when it served a purpose. Rather, it was the crushing bleakness of defeat, the cold emptiness of having no-one left to perform to, no-one he could show his glowing future to, where magic ran free and reigned over the rest of the world, because that future had been ground into dust along with everything else.

As long as Albus was there, though – not only sharing in what he saw but _grounding_ it, making it better – there was nothing to fear. 

“Do you plan to sleep on top of me all day?” Albus ask in a low voice, fingers tracing patterns against Gellert’s back.

“Not _all_ day,” he replied lazily. “We do need to make travel plans.”

“ _I_ need to cook for my siblings,” Albus said, giving Gellert a teasing shove. “And clean the house. And see how much money I can scrounge up for potions ingredients. _And -_ ”

“Yes, yes, I can follow this logic,” Gellert interrupted. He wished Albus hadn’t brought up the many things that drew them apart and kept him burdened. In just under a month, though, it wouldn’t matter. The world would be theirs to push, pull and guide into shape – to recreate the way they had recreated themselves, in words whispered by a riverbank and etched into parchment.

“You know I’m as eager to leave as you are,” Albus said mildly. “More so, perhaps.”

“Of course. Who wouldn’t wish to escape from here?”

“It’s not just about escape,” Albus said. “It’s about – being able to do something. Something more than put food on the table as though as long as we sit together at the right time every day, we aren’t irreparably broken.” As he neared the end of his sentence Gellert felt something shiver in Albus’ voice, fragile and on the verge of breaking. 

“ _Nothing_ is ever irreparably broken, my dear,” Gellert replied. As he spoke, he idly conjured a shower of golden butterflies from the tip of his wand, sending them to hover midair under the roof of the barn, looking for all the world like they belonged there. “That’s the beauty of magic. What we know now, that’s only the tip of it. If the tale of the Hallows is to be believed, even death can be mastered. If we have that power, we can help Ariana. We can help _anyone_ who has been hurt like she has.”

“The world can be improved,” Albus replied. “ _We_ can improve it, and we will. We can teach muggles and wizards to live side-by-side without hatred or resentment. We can pursue the greater good relentlessly, guide people to peace – but we _cannot_ fix what is broken. Only tape it back together and hope to make better things in the future.”

Gellert couldn’t miss the mournful note in his lover’s voice. It wasn’t a momentary sadness, the kind he felt when he emerged from a vision where everything was shattered and destroyed. It was something bone-deep, weary and accepting – something that had no place in the voice of someone as young, shining and brilliant as Albus. He wished to burn it out, to remind Albus how beautiful they were together, how much they could achieve. Someone who could – who one day _would –_ hold the world in his hands at Gellert’s side should not sound so defeated by it. 

Gellert reached out to tilt Albus' chin towards him. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Perhaps some things cannot be fixed. But they are irrelevant in the face of how much _is_ possible.”

Albus’ eyes searched his face, and the thrill of elation that ran through Gellert led him to conclude that he would never tire of evoking that look on Albus’ face; but he felt a distance still, an uncomfortable knowledge that Albus was not a seamless part of him – that there were parts of the other man’s mind he had not reached yet, did not understand, and if he did not reach them the gap might widen far enough for Albus to break off from him and leave him one step closer to that feeling of unbearable _aloneness_ that he had woken to.

The kiss that followed was desperate and hungry, hunting with lips and tongue for those final, elusive scraps of himself that Albus refused to share in words. 

They parted, Albus leaning over Gellert, the ends of his hair tickling his face, his neck. His face had smoothed over and Gellert could no longer read it – could not have said if Albus was still hurting, or admiring Gellert, or thinking of the future – or if his mind was somewhere else entirely. The sudden inability to decipher him sent a thrum of unease through Gellert which he quieted by reaching up to plant a kiss on Albus’ neck. 

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered. Feeling the scoff building in Albus’ chest he kissed him again, quicker, harder. “You _are. We_ are beautiful, this thing we have created here between us. _This_ is what we must share with the world, don’t you see?” Gellert settled back against a pile of hay, allowing Albus the chance to drink in the scene, the two of them lying together under a rain of golden butterflies.  

“And we will,” Albus promised, moving to press Gellert between him and the hay. “But carefully, when the time is right.”

“The time will never be right,” Gellert said, still carding his fingers through Albus’ hair. For all that it stuck to his face after he fell asleep at his desk or in other unflattering places, it was still smooth and silky, lending just the right resistance to his fingers. “We must _make_ it right.”

“I’ve told you what I think of this.” Albus was arguing, but his eyes were shining still. “I’m not naïve enough to believe there won’t be a fight. But we look to the cultures where muggles worshipped magic, rather than fearing it. We position ourselves through that lens. Remind them that there was a time they turned to us for wisdom and guidance; invite them to do so again. Fight only those who would destroy us.”

“Show them what we are capable of,” Gellert agreed, untangling himself from Albus’ hair to touch the sharp, intelligent lines of Albus’ face. The pouring in under the door had softened into a warm glow and Albus seemed to bask in it. There was no hiding anymore; he spoke directly, boyish humility discarded, gaze steady, certain. The bookish scholar Aunt Bathilda had invited for tea had intrigued him, drawn him in, but this, _this_ was who he wanted to be seen with when he stepped out before the world to share his visions. “ _Albus,_ ” he said, savoring the syllables. It tasted strange on his tongue in that moment; not yet possessing that old familiarity he had anticipated when he’d first heard it, but too familiar to be a stranger’s. Sharp and fresh with discovery. “Something like this – like _us –_ is not meant to be kept secret. Beauty – _magic -_ exists to be put on display, to be used and shared and _admired._ When we are finished with the world, I could kiss you in the middle of the main street in Berlin, and no-one would dare tell us not to.”

Silently, Albus got to his feet, and the butterflies began to swirl overhead. Gellert frowned. They should not obey anyone’s command but his, unless - 

Patting down his pockets for his wand confirmed his suspicions. Overhead, the sparks that had been butterflies gathered into a circle at the command of his wand – wielded in Albus' hand – with a triangle and a line running through the middle. Gellert felt his pulse race. When Albus turned back to him, the look in his eyes could not be described as awe, or longing, or fondness, or anything else Gellert had come to associate with him. It was, quite simply, burning.

“I -” Gellert began, and stopped, seeing the anticipation in Albus' eyes. He knew, then, what words he could use, that would tie Albus to him. Felt them on the tip of his tongue, ready to break free. 

Knew, too, that if he said them and was wrong, if Albus saw through them, this would be lost. Every gesture, every word meant to wind Albus closer to him, would have been for nothing.

“- I’m glad you understand me,” he finished to answer the unspoken question, those other words swallowed down and writhing strangely in his chest. He wondered which possibility had stopped him in his tracks: that he did not mean them, or that he _did._

* * *

 

It was raining again when Gellert Grindelwald left Godric’s Hollow, but this time there was nothing to shield his skin from being pelted by it. He barely registered the rivulets of water dripping from his hair, the splinters digging into his fists as he hammered at his aunt’s door.

Bathilda Bagshot opened her door and gaped openly as he stumbled in. “Give me the portkey,” he demanded, voice just barely held under control. He wanted to ransack the house, turn it upside down in search for it, but it would be quicker to simply _ask,_ and he could not bear to me here a moment longer than he had to.

“What happened?” She said, moving to block Gellert’s path to the stairs.

“It doesn’t _matter,_ ” Gellert bit out. “I need to leave.”

Determination flashed across his aunt’s face and he saw her hand go to her wand. A small, weary part of him wondered if he would end up hurting another person he would have preferred not to before the night was out. The rest of him was more than ready to barge through her if needs be.

“You need to calm yourself first, dear. Come to the kitchen, I’ll make you tea and you can tell me what’s upset you.”

For just a moment, the steady normalcy of her voice broke through the ringing of curses in his ears and the hallway stopped spinning. They stood in silence, water dripping from his hair as the events of the night came flooding back into his mind with vicious clarity. Bathilda must have taken his silence for assent, because she turned and began to walk down the hallway.

“He hates me,” Gellert whispered. “I made a mistake and he’ll never forgive me.” The words were for his benefit, not hers; he had to say them out loud to solidify them, to crush voice in his head that imagined he could turn back and knock on the door again to find Albus packed and eager to leave, Ariana _alive_ and at his side.

“Albus Dumbledore?” Bathilda turned, face softening in understanding. “The boy worships the ground you walk on, Gellert. Whatever has happened between you, I am quite certain it will look a lot smaller in the morning. If you leave now, however, you will hurt him even more, and that hurt will only fester. Please, come to the kitchen.”

Gellert shook his head. He already knew how he could tell the story to minimize the damage. He had lost his temper – who would not have? Aberforth had no right to stand in their way like that, no right to try and control his brother. He had started the conflict, wound Gellert up, forced him to take a stand or else abandon all his plans. Anything that had happened after was – a tragic accident. No-one could say who had cast the spell, no-one could clearly lay the blame.

But no retelling would erase the memory of horror replacing the adoration in Albus' eyes, or the way he wouldn’t even look at Gellert when he told – ordered - _begged_ him to leave the house.

Gellert’s hand was on his wand. “ _Imperio_ _,_ ” he uttered numbly, and Bathilda went still. It was his second unforgiveable curse in a single night; for all the lines he had crossed before, that should still have registered in some way, but what did it matter? He wouldn’t be forgiven regardless.

“Bring me the portkey,” he repeated. 

* * *

 

In a small coastal French city, a blond German youth sat curled up against a stone wall, letting it leach all warmth from his body so he wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to feel the jagged, hollow edges of his mind where another was meant to fit alongside it. In the morning, he would pick himself up, take the scattered pieces of his plans and fit them back together into something that would drive him onwards, and bury the nagging thought that perhaps there was such a thing as _irreparably broken_ after all.


End file.
